How mandatory sex registries harm people living with HIV
Since 1989, 200 Canadians have been charged with alleged HIV non-disclosure.
(Photo credit: Jon Tyson, Unsplash)
Experts, advocates, and patients alike felt a renewed sense of hope after the news of a third person apparently cured of HIV.
The supposed cure, using a novel stem cell transplant method, resulted in the world’s first woman being considered HIV-free. She’s also the first mixed-race patient to be cured of HIV.
The woman, referred to as the “New York patient,” was diagnosed with HIV in 2013 before contracting leukemia four years later.
The treatment, with umbilical cord blood, could benefit “approximately 50 patients per year in the United States,” according to the doctors who performed the treatment.
The Guardian explained that “after patients receive an umbilical cord blood transplant, they are then given additional adult stem cells. The stem cells grow quickly but are eventually replaced by cord blood cells.”
But while progress is being made to treat patients with HIV/AIDS, how do we grapple with the fact that, in 2022, we’ve criminalized more individuals for having HIV/AIDS than cured them?
For the HIV Legal Network in Toronto, the news about the New York patient is a step forward. But even if there isn’t a cure for HIV/AIDS, the non-profit organization says there’s plenty the Canadian federal government can do to both destigmatize and support individuals who are HIV-positive.
In a Feb. 24 statement, the HIV Legal Network noted that while the number of people being prosecuted in Canada for cases of alleged non-disclosure of their HIV status has declined in recent years, “people living with HIV continue to live under the threat of criminalization each and every day.”